Summary
“The Blue Night of Jeju I” makes for a nice change of scenery as we learn some deeper truths about several characters.
This recap of Extraordinary Attorney Woo season 1, episode 13, “The Blue Night of Jeju I”, contains spoilers. You can check out our thoughts on last week’s episode by clicking these words.
I’ve always suspected that having legal expertise would bring all kinds of people out of the woodwork. In “The Blue Night of Jeju I”, Young-woo is approached for legal advice by the father of the landlady of the building that she and her father live in. I mean, imagine that. It can’t be ideal. Or maybe I’m just becoming the curmudgeonly type.
Extraordinary Attorney Woo season 1, episode 13 recap
What’s more is that the case, at least at first, seems pretty trivial. Yeong-bok has been rather unfairly charged 3000 yen for heading up the road near a temple; an admission fee for a cultural heritage site he was never admitted into. It’s not a huge amount of money, and the matter of someone’s stubbornness and pride doesn’t seem all that important to me. Then again, I’m not into aquatic life as much as Young-woo is, and since the temple is on Jeju Island… well, these things write themselves sometimes.
Somewhat hilariously, this case turns into a kind of holiday rather quickly. And it’s a fun setup since it’s a great excuse to bring everyone and their attendant personal issues together for a change of scenery – and hopefully perspective.
Consider Min-woo, for instance. He’s been cast as a pretty unambiguous villain until now, doing whatever he can to try and spite Young-woo, but here we learn some more about his family history, including the ill-health of his parents and the need for money to support them, and you can understand his actions a little more.
Jeju Island also seems to bring on something of an existential crisis in Myeong-seok, who is grappling with not only health woes but a painful past of overworking, drifting away from, and ultimately losing his loved ones, and now, as he approaches something possibly resembling an end, he’s beginning to wonder if he might have made the wrong decisions. A sobering, painful thought, and it’s actually on a cliffhanger related to Myeong-seok’s health that the episode ends.
This is the second two-part case. But it’s the first that feels like a holiday. And perhaps the comparatively small stakes of the case are intentional, a way to get us to focus on the bubbling relationships and personal crises that have been brought along for the trip.
